asala

Definitions

n. a militant Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization formed in 1975 to force Turkey to acknowledge killing more than a million Armenians and forcibly removing them from border areas in 1915; wants Turkey to pay reparations and cede territory to Armenia

The courageous Syrian philosopher Sadik al-Azm once described the Arabs as “the Hamlet of our times, doomed to unrelieved tragedy, forever hesitating, procrastinating, and wavering between the old and the new, between asala and mu’asara (authenticity and contemporaneity), between turath and tajdid (heritage and renewal), between huwiyya and hadatha (identity and modernity), and between religion and secularity….”